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If such be the Nature of Beings and of That which transcends
all the realm of Being, Evil cannot have place among Beings or in
the Beyond-Being; these are good.
There remains, only, if Evil exist at all, that it be situate in
the realm of Non-Being, that it be some mode, as it were, of the
Non-Being, that it have its seat in something in touch with
Non-Being or to a certain degree communicate in Non-Being.
By this Non-Being, of course, we are not to understand something
that simply does not exist, but only something of an utterly
different order from Authentic-Being: there is no question here
of movement or position with regard to Being; the Non-Being we
are thinking of is, rather, an image of Being or perhaps
something still further removed than even an image.
Now this [the required faint image of Being] might be the
sensible universe with all the impressions it engenders, or it
might be something of even later derivation, accidental to the
realm of sense, or again, it might be the source of the
sense-world or something of the same order entering into it to
complete it.
Some conception of it would be reached by thinking of
measurelessness as opposed to measure, of the unbounded against
bound, the unshaped against a principle of shape, the ever-needy
against the self-sufficing: think of the ever-undefined, the
never at rest, the all-accepting but never sated, utter dearth;
and make all this character not mere accident in it but its
equivalent for essential-being, so that, whatsoever fragment of
it be taken, that part is all lawless void, while whatever
participates in it and resembles it becomes evil, though not of
course to the point of being, as itself is, Evil-Absolute.
In what substantial-form [hypostasis] then is all this to be
found- not as accident but as the very substance itself?
For if Evil can enter into other things, it must have in a
certain sense a prior existence, even though it may not be an
essence. As there is Good, the Absolute, as well as Good, the
quality, so, together with the derived evil entering into
something not itself, there must be the Absolute Evil.
But how? Can there be Unmeasure apart from an unmeasured object?
Does not Measure exist apart from unmeasured things? Precisely as
there is Measure apart from anything measured, so there is
Unmeasure apart from the unmeasured. If Unmeasure could not exist
independently, it must exist either in an unmeasured object or in
something measured; but the unmeasured could not need Unmeasure
and the measured could not contain it.
There must, then, be some Undetermination-Absolute, some Absolute
Formlessness; all the qualities cited as characterizing the
Nature of Evil must be summed under an Absolute Evil; and every
evil thing outside of this must either contain this Absolute by
saturation or have taken the character of evil and become a cause
of evil by consecration to this Absolute.
What will this be?
That Kind whose place is below all the patterns, forms, shapes,
measurements and limits, that which has no trace of good by any
title of its own, but [at best] takes order and grace from some
Principle outside itself, a mere image as regards Absolute-Being
but the Authentic Essence of Evil- in so far as Evil can have
Authentic Being. In such a Kind, Reason recognizes the Primal
Evil, Evil Absolute.
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